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Three years after the Pretoria Agreement, which marked the formal end of the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, tensions are once again escalating. Asmara and Addis Ababa are strengthening their military presence, former members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) are seeking new allies, and the dispute over Ethiopian access to the sea is threatening to boil over. What began as a peace process increasingly looks like a fragile ceasefire in a border region whose conflicts were never truly resolved.
Jenny Ouédraogo is a project manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s West Africa Office in Dakar.
War Over Tigray
The war in Tigray, which lasted from 2020 to 2022, is considered the bloodiest of the twenty-first century. Estimates suggest that up to 800,000 were killed in the fighting, with over 2 million displaced. Cities like Mekelle and Shire lie in ruins and entire regions have been devastated. Agricultural land was deliberately rendered unusable, supply systems collapsed, and public facilities were destroyed. Many people still live in makeshift shelters or in areas that remain life-threateningly dangerous owing to landmines and unexploded ordnance. Human rights organizations speak of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, while a study by the New Lines Institute found evidence of genocide.
But it’s not only the northern province of Tigray under pressure. In the neighbouring Amhara region, the Fano militia movement is playing a central role in the conflicts. During the Tigray war, it operated as an informal ally of the federal government, but broke away after the Pretoria Agreement. The triggers were disarmament plans in the course of federal security reforms and unresolved territorial questions in West Tigray. In Oromia, the Oromo Liberation Army — driven by historic marginalization, land conflicts, and political repression — is waging a guerrilla war against state forces. Military countermeasures are intensifying the spiral of violence and driving further displacement.
These conflicts are putting Ethiopia’s federal system — designed to guarantee ethnic self-governance — under mounting pressure. Even before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office, Ethiopia’s longstanding conflict with Eritrea was closely bound up with internal Ethiopian power struggles, particularly the TPLF’s dominant role within the ruling coalition at the time. Abiy treats regional autonomy primarily as a security problem and uses these tensions as tools to consolidate central government authority at the expense of federalism.
The Horn of Africa remains a space of fragile equilibrium where old conflicts, unresolved border questions, new alliances, and geopolitical interests all overlap.
The war hasn’t just physically destroyed Tigray, but has deeply shaken the state’s political order. The TPLF, for decades the dominant power within Ethiopia, has emerged from the Pretoria Agreement institutionally weakened, divided, and far from any democratic renewal. While the agreement formally marked the end of hostilities, it left open the question of how political authority, security, and resources should be organized in the future.
This ambiguity has led to visible fault lines within the Tigrayan elite. Parts of the former TPLF leadership accepted the agreement as a necessary de-escalation, while others rejected it as a forced retreat. This conflict is particularly evident in the confrontations between the transitional administration under Getachew Reda appointed by Addis Ababa and hardliners within the TPLF who distrust the peace process and demand stronger military guarantees.
The main beneficiary of this situation is Ethiopia’s central government. It is exploiting Tigray’s fragmentation to weaken opposition to federal authority and keep political room for manoeuvre in the region tight. The delay in reinstating elected regional institutions, the sluggish implementation of key provisions of the Pretoria Agreement, and the continued influence of federal security forces all show that Addis Ababa is banking on control rather than political reintegration.
But the Eritrean regime under Isaias Afwerki is also benefiting — not through formal alliances, but strategic distance. Eritrea maintains a military presence in Tigray and positions itself as an indispensable security factor without committing politically. This posture strengthens Asmara’s regional influence. Moreover, the unresolved border conflict serves as justification for the permanent state of emergency, indefinite military conscription (including for women), and the country’s extensive isolation. External confrontation is substituting for domestic legitimacy with profound social consequences, particularly for an entire generation of young Eritreans who have little chance of escaping military service.
Ethiopia Under Pressure
Today’s escalations are less an expression of new conflicts than the continuation of old disputes that were never politically resolved. To understand the deeper causes of current tensions, we need to look back. The border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea from 1998 to 2000 had already claimed up to 100,000 lives. It ended 25 years ago with the Algiers Agreement, but key points of contention remained unresolved at the time.
In the aftermath, the border area around Badme became the core of the conflict — not because of its economic value, but because of its symbolic significance. It exemplifies the character of the border war: months of trench warfare, massive artillery strikes, and minefields along a barely marked colonial border. The decision by the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission to award Badme to Eritrea was meant to resolve the conflict legally — but politically it had the opposite effect, as Addis Ababa refused to accept the ruling for nearly two decades and the border remained effectively closed and heavily militarized.
The political power shifts following the war coincided with a period of growing economic vulnerability for Ethiopia. As Africa’s largest landlocked country, Ethiopia is structurally dependent on access to the sea. Historically, Ethiopia had access to ports like Assab until Eritrea gained its independence in 1993 — a bitter loss that continues to shape political thinking in Ethiopia to this day. Today, around 95 percent of foreign trade is handled through the port of Djibouti.
Under current economic conditions, this dependency is increasingly becoming a problem. High national debt, acute foreign currency shortages, inflation, and declining growth rates are increasing the pressure on Addis Ababa to secure alternative sea access. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly emphasized publicly that Ethiopia has an existential interest in its own or at least guaranteed access to the sea. This phrasing that has been attentively noted throughout the region, given that his rhetoric marks a political shift: while previous governments accepted landlocked status as a given structural constraint, it is now being openly challenged. Port access is evolving from a question of economic infrastructure into a strategic power factor. But potential alternatives to Djibouti — which, apart from Eritrea, also include Somaliland and Sudan — bring security risks with them.
Any provocation could tip the already fragile stability into open violence.
Eritrea plays the central role in this scenario. With the ports of Assab and Massawa, the country controls strategically vital points on the Red Sea coast. Their importance extends far beyond economic revenue: they are levers of regional power projection. For Asmara, control over these ports is both a security asset and a means of exerting political influence over Addis Ababa. Accordingly, the Eritrean regime responds to any debate about Ethiopian interest in sea access with circumspection.
The port question is thus not merely an infrastructure issue, but part of a broader power conflict. It links economic constraints with territorial sensitivities and military calculations. This brings Tigray back to centre stage: geographically, as a border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea; politically, as a space of unresolved security questions; and strategically, as a potential corridor or buffer in future escalations.
The Situation Remains Precarious
One thing is certain: the Horn of Africa remains a space of fragile equilibrium where old conflicts, unresolved border questions, new alliances, and geopolitical interests all overlap. The United Arab Emirates is expanding its presence along the Red Sea, investing in ports, logistics, and military installations. Eritrea is deliberately exploiting regional conflicts — from Tigray to Sudan to the border question — to secure domestic control. There are no formal alliances with Ethiopia; instead, Asmara relies on tactical partnerships and bilateral arrangements. With its recent withdrawal from the East African regional organization IGAD, Eritrea is now openly signalling its rejection of multilateral cooperation.
Global interests are intensifying the uncertainty further: the United States is pursuing security and migration agendas and monitoring diaspora communities from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia whose possible return to a region full of repression and instability will create new tensions. Egypt and Sudan are also indirectly involved through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — water rights and security questions connect local conflicts with geopolitical power projection.
For the people of Tigray, the situation remains precarious. Any provocation could tip the already fragile stability into open violence. The Horn of Africa is thus not just a historic crisis zone but a highly explosive region where old conflicts, new rivalries, and global interests could escalate at any moment.
This article first appeared in nd in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Chris Fenwick and Joseph Keady for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
